Fake agent
Fugitive British love fraudster arrested near Zurich

This content was published on July 4, 2018 10:28 AMJul 4, 2018 - 10:28

The suspect was arrested in Wädenswil, a town 20km south of Zurich

(Keystone)

Swiss police say they have arrested a fugitive British man who allegedly swindled a woman out of more than £850,000 (CHF1 million) following an international manhunt.

The Federal Office of Police and the Zurich cantonal police confirmed that the 45-year-old suspect, one of Britain’s most wanted fugitives, was apprehended in an apartment near Lake Zurich, and has been in detention since last Saturday pending his extradition.

He reportedly lived under a false name in Spain and later in Switzerland.

The man, who was on the run for two years, posed as a secret service agent and a banker in a romance scam with a 61-year-old woman in Britain, and will face criminal proceedings for 20 fraud offences when he goes before a British court.

The Swiss authorities say the arrest of is a good example of police cooperation at a national and international level.

A European arrest warrant was issued for Mark Acklom in June 2016, and he was believed to be at large in Spain, having been released from a Spanish prison over a £200,000 property fraud.

In May last year he was spotted in Geneva, where he was believed to have been with his family.

Comment on this article

Copyright

All rights reserved. The content of the website by swissinfo.ch is copyrighted. It is intended for private use only. Any other use of the website content beyond the use stipulated above, particularly the distribution, modification, transmission, storage and copying requires prior written consent of swissinfo.ch. Should you be interested in any such use of the website content, please contact us via contact@swissinfo.ch.

As regards the use for private purposes, it is only permitted to use a hyperlink to specific content, and to place it on your own website or a website of third parties. The swissinfo.ch website content may only be embedded in an ad-free environment without any modifications. Specifically applying to all software, folders, data and their content provided for download by the swissinfo.ch website, a basic, non-exclusive and non-transferable license is granted that is restricted to the one-time downloading and saving of said data on private devices. All other rights remain the property of swissinfo.ch. In particular, any sale or commercial use of these data is prohibited.